Bitcoin Price Surges 10% to $16,300 After Week-Long Slump

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The bitcoin price has started to demonstrate early signs of recovery and an upward trend after experiencing a week-long slump.

10 Percent Surge

Over the past 24 hours, the price of bitcoin has surged by more than 10 percent, increasing from $14,500 to $17,000 at its peak. Since then, in the past three hours, the price of bitcoin has stabilized in the $16,300 region.

Currently, most of the largest trading pairs of bitcoin are alternative cryptocurrency-to-BTC pairs, including Tron (TRX), Ether, and Ripple. According to CoinMarketCap, Tron remains as the largest trading pair in the bitcoin market ahead of the USD-to-BTC pair, settling more than $2.8 billion on Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Given that the price of bitcoin has been increasing over the past 24 hours while the valuation of other cryptocurrencies in the market slightly corrected, it can be stated that volumes are moving from alternative cryptocurrencies to bitcoin, which has become a reserve asset in the cryptocurrency market.

The bitcoin market has also seen many XRP-to-BTC trades amidst a sell-off, as investors that purchased XRPs based on unverified rumors that Coinbase was planning to integrate XRP left the market. The Ripple market cap has fallen by around $20 billion since Coinbase refuted the rumor.

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote, “We haven’t made any decisions to add new assets to Coinbase or GDAX at this time. Any statement to the contrary is untrue.” The Coinbase team added:

“A committee of internal experts is responsible for determining whether and when new assets will be added to the platform in accordance with our framework. These individuals — and all employees at Coinbase — are subject to confidentiality and trading restrictions.”

The valuations of cryptocurrencies that were involved in the spew of rumors spread across online bitcoin forums like Reddit fell as a result, while the price of bitcoin has continued to increase.

Japan and South Korea Leading Price

In the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange market, bitcoin is being traded at over $21,000, with a staggering $5,000 premium over the global average market. Although Ripple and Ethereum accounted for larger daily trading volumes on both Bithumb and Korbit throughout the past month, the trading volume of bitcoin in the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange has increased, surpassing that of Ether and Bitcoin Cash.

More to that, in Japan, formerly China’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Huobi and local entertainment conglomerate GMM are expected to launch cryptocurrency trading platforms this month, in January.

With Huobi (formerly China’s largest exchange), GMO Group, BitFlyer, and GMM, the Japanese cryptocurrency landscape will drastically change and the mainstream adoption of bitcoin will further increase in the Japanese market.

Analysts expect the price of bitcoin to surge throughout January, especially if Nasdaq moves onto listing bitcoin futures within the first quarter of 2018 as planned. Both the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) have filed for six bitcoin exchange-traded funds, introducing a more efficient and regulated investment vehicles for accredited individual investors.

The support from major financial institutions remain exclusive to bitcoin, and none of the alternative cryptocurrencies in the market have seen commercial success through regulated futures and ETF listings.